تاثیر خدمات تحقیق و توسعه بر عملکرد فناوری اطلاعات و ارتباطات شرکت های کوچک و متوسط کره ای

In recent years, research and development (R&D) in the service industry has attracted a great deal of attention from both academia and industrial firms. However, compared to the manufacturing sector, little research exists on the implications of R&D for the financial and/or non-financial performance of firms in the service industry. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of service R&D on the performance of information communication technology (ICT) firms. We identify five categories of R&D activities and investigate their impact on the financial and non-financial performance of 100 ICT firms, with a focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in South Korea. We postulate positive relationships between R&D efforts and a firm's performance. However, the findings only partially support our hypotheses; unexpected results demonstrate that the presence of R&D management negatively influences a firm's performance. We present detailed statistical results and discuss the implications of the study.

During the last few decades scholars have increasingly stressed the importance of research and development (R&D) in the manufacturing sector. Technology-based companies in this sector put forth large expenditures for R&D in order to maintain their competitive advantage and ensure their future viability. The service industry currently accounts for more than half of the gross domestic product within developed countries (OECD, 2005). Because the attention from academia is a recent development, the concept of R&D in the service industry is more obscure than in the manufacturing industry. Moreover, the unique characteristics of services make it more difficult to capture both the characteristics of R&D (and R&D-like efforts) and their impact. Thus far, these challenges have limited the studies on the relationship between service R&D and a firm's business performance. In this paper we examine the impact of service R&D efforts on the financial and non-financial performance of firms, focusing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially in the information communication technology (ICT) service industry in South Korea. The ICT service industry has experienced rapid international expansion and has made a large investment in R&D in order to gain technology competencies and provide more customized services. However, managers in the industry have often ignored the importance of service R&D. Because the influence of service R&D is not well understood (even academic research on this subject is rare), industry management has little confidence in its ability to improve performance (Gault, 1997, Djellal et al., 2003 and Miles, 2007). The balance of this paper is organized as follows: section “Literature review” includes a review of the literature in related fields of research. In section “Research concept and analysis model”, we outline the research concept, our main hypotheses and the model used in the article. In section “Empirical analysis”, we present empirical analyses including sampling, variable measurement, and statistical results. The final section contains a summary of our study, discussion and directions for future research.

In this study, we investigated the impact of five categories of service R&D on the financial and non-financial performance of firms. Through analysis of data from a survey of 100 SMEs in the Korean ICT industry, our research yielded some thought-provoking findings. The results supported our hypotheses that managers in ICT SMEs perceive a positive impact of three categories of service R&D (research about organizations and the behavior of economic agents, research about the design and development of technology, and multidisciplinary R&D projects) on overall business performance. However, in contrast to our expectations, the findings demonstrate that managers in ICT SMEs have identified two categories of service R&D (research about the social sciences and humanities, and R&D management), as unnecessary and even disadvantageous tasks in the context of the firm's performance. Therefore, an optimal guideline for firms to follow would be: if possible, the firm should implement the three categories of R&D that showed a positive impact, while the two categories with a negative impact could be implemented at a minimum level within the firm or possibly outsourced or purchased. One reason for the negative influence of research in the social sciences and humanities might be found in the characteristics of our respondents. SMEs often face great challenges both with regard to finances and dealing with an insufficient labor force; in addition, they are under pressure to achieve a faster return on their investment compared to large enterprises. Hence, compared to large firms, SMEs have a tendency to concentrate their limited R&D budget and workforce on direct technological development efforts. A second reason might be a perception of research in the social sciences and humanities. SMEs generally recognize the value of social science research, but the firms limit the use of this research to a supporting instrument used to better understand the business environment. Most SMEs do not consider social science research an essential aspect of R&D activity for their business. Time lags might be a third reason for this negative perception; if the firm has recently implemented the R&D activity, it has not yet had enough time to bear fruit and the firm could not have perceived any benefits yet. An intriguing finding is that the presence of R&D management negatively influences a firm's performance. This result implies that in practice, SME employees understand the role of R&D management as limited to supporting the other profitable R&D efforts (e.g., technology design and development, multidisciplinary R&D projects). In other words, managers perceive that the activities of R&D management (e.g., the protection of intellectual property rights [IPR], patent management in technology and business models, and the development of firm-specific technology roadmaps) are necessary in order to efficiently coordinate other R&D efforts, but do not directly influence the firm's performance. Another interesting result demonstrates the significance of the design and development of technologies in SMEs. Experimental efforts regarding the improvement of process and quality; the production of scripts, manuals and guidebooks; and the development of applied technologies and new services took priority over other service R&D categories for our respondents. Korean SMEs in the ICT service industry have strongly enhanced their technological capabilities in the last few decades, and continue to strongly emphasize technological innovation to further enhance their competitiveness. This research on the relationship between service R&D and the non-financial performance of firms demonstrates that investment in R&D contributes not only to the economic, but also to the non-economic performance, of firms; this relationship has received less recognition in both academia and practice. The findings suggest that the impact of service R&D should be evaluated against overall business performance. Finally, the results represent service R&D within ICT SMEs in South Korea, and cannot necessarily be generalized to other countries. However, we expect similar findings in other countries because at the international level ICT SMEs have similar characteristics and face similar technological challenges. In addition, these firms are relatively less influenced by cultural factors than firms in other service industries (e.g., finance, education, healthcare). The results of this study suggest several avenues for future research. First, there is a need to expand the study to include an analysis of patterns in other service sectors. The current work is limited and it is premature to understand the findings as a general phenomenon in the service industry. Second, firms’ financial and non-financial performances can influence one another. A study that takes this mutual influence into account will help R&D managers and marketers to shape R&D strategies and planning. Third, we encourage researchers to investigate the impact of service R&D on the financial and non-financial performance of larger firms, in order to compare results to those presented here for SMEs. Indeed, our next step in this avenue of research may be to see if there are notable differences relating to the size of firms. Fourth, there is a need to study how expenditures for service R&D should be reflected in a firm's balance sheet. Balance sheets that accurately reflect R&D expenditures lead to a more nuanced economic understanding and analysis of the impact of R&D on firms’ performances. Finally, a study reflecting time lags between R&D implementation and the corresponding effects on firms’ performances is needed. The field would benefit from an analysis of the relationship between R&D efforts and effects over time.